Final CFP WSDM 2012 Doctoral Consortium

Final Call for WSDM 2012 Doctoral Consortium Submissionshttp://www.wsdm2012.org/February 8, 2012The inaugural WSDM 2012 Doctoral Consortium will provide doctoralstudents with a unique opportunity to have substantive interaction withother researchers regarding their proposed dissertation research.The objectives of the Doctoral Consortium are:- To provide a forum where doctoral students can present and discusstheir research with experienced Web, Search and Data Mining researcherswho are members of the Doctoral Consortium Committee.- To provide students with an opportunity to establish and contribute toa supportive community, including other doctoral students at a similarstage of their dissertation research.The Consortium will take place on Wednesday, February 8, the same day asthe Tutorials. The format will include student presentations withplenary discussions, individual meetings with experienced researchers,and discussions over lunch and breaks.Prospective attendees should have written, or be close to completing, athesis proposal (or equivalent). It is desirable that the student not beso close to completion that the event would have little impact on theirwork. Before submitting, students should discuss this criterion withtheir advisor.Candidates for the Doctoral Consortium will be selected based on thepotential of their research for future impact on the field of Web Searchand Data Mining and the likely benefit to the student of participatingin the Consortium. This selection will be based in part on a writtenpaper, singly authored by the student. For students who are selected toparticipate in the Consortium, a two-page extended abstract will bepublished in the WSDM Conference Proceedings.Doctoral students who submit to the Consortium are permitted to havepreviously published on their research, and are encouraged to submitpapers or posters to WSDM and associated workshops.Submission Guidelines=====================The submitted paper (up to five pages) will be the basis for detaileddiscussions at the Consortium. It should include:- Motivation for the proposed research.- Background and related work (including key references).- Description of proposed research, including main research questions.- Research methodology and proposed experiments (where appropriate).- Specific research issues for discussion at the Doctoral Consortium.In addition, a one-page appendix to the paper describing benefits thatwould be obtained by attending the Consortium. It should include:- A statement by the student saying why they want to attend the Consortium.- A statement by their advisor saying how the student would benefit byattending the Consortium. Advisors should also specifically statewhether the student has written, or is close to completing, a thesisproposal (or equivalent), and when they expect the student would defendtheir dissertation if they progress at a typical rate.Format Requirements===================Submissions must be written in English and submitted in the ACMConference style (for LaTeX, use the "Option 2" style). The paper shouldbe no more than 5 pages in length including all figures and references,but not including the one page appendix. The first page must contain thetitle of the paper, full author name, affiliation and contact details,an abstract of up to 250 words, ACM Computing Reviews categories, and upto 3 keywords describing the topic areas. Information about categoriesand keywords can be found in ACM Web pages on the computingclassification system and in the LaTeX and Word templates.Note: The full Doctoral Consortium submissions will not be published inthe WSDM Conference Proceedings. However two-page extended abstractswill be published for all accepted submissions.Consortium submissions must be in PDF format and submitted using theEasyChair system:http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wsdm2012dcSubmissions will be reviewed by the members of the Doctoral ConsortiumCommittee.Questions can be addressed to:wsdm2012dc-bC77Qfv0vuxrovVCs/uTlw@public.gmane.orgImportant Dates===============

Call for Workshops: ECIR 2012 - Extended Deadline

Call for Workshops: ECIR 2012 **The deadline has been extended to September 19th**34th European Conference on Information RetrievalBarcelona, Spain, 1-5 April 2012http://ecir2012.upf.edu/

Call for Workshops

Proposals
are invited for one-day or half-day workshops to be run on the first
day of the conference, the 1st of April, 2012. ECIR workshops provide a
platform for presenting novel ideals in a less formal and possibly more
focused way than the conference itself. We expect that the workshops
offer a common forum to engage and encourage researchers (in particular
PhD students) to present and discuss their work, and to obtain valuable
feedback in an interactive, supportive and friendly environment. The
format of each workshop is to be determined by the organisers but we are
looking for exciting and dynamic workshops that have significant scope
for participant interaction. Researchers and practitioners from all
segments of the information retrieval community are invited to submit
proposals for review. The organisers of approved workshops are expected
to define the workshop's focus, gather and review submissions, and
decide upon final program content.

Proposals should be 2-3 pages in length (ACM format), and should contain:

1. the title & abstract of the workshop 2. background, motivation, and appropriateness to ECIR 3. the workshop goals/objectives coupled with desired outcomes 4. the format/structure of the workshop (planned activities and a tentative schedule of events)
5. the intended audience, the selection process for participants,
whether it will be a full day or half day workshop, and what resources
are required 6. If this workshop is related or follows on from
another workshop (if the workshop has been held previously at ECIR or
another conference, then the organisers should indicate this and
describe briefly past attendance and outcomes, and why another workshop
is needed). 7. short bios of the organisers. 8. any other
relevant information to support your proposal (i.e. the list of invited
speakers, the workshop's philosophy, overall vision, program committee,
etc)

The deadline for submitting workshop proposals is the 11th
of September, 2011. Submissions to be sent in PDF format to David E.
Losada (david.losada-727wSuOHAmo@public.gmane.org)
with subject field "ECIR Workshop". The submissions will undergo peer
review and will be selected by the Workshop Program Committee. We
anticipate notifications being sent on the 1st of November, 2011.

Job: IT Manager, eResearch University of Sydney closes 11 Oct 2011

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) MANAGER - eResearch

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY

REFERENCE NO. 1426/0811

ICT is responsible for the
development, implementation and support of IT services for staff and
students. We provide sophisticated technology infrastructure and
services for learning and teaching, research activities and major
administrative systems. Our programs and operational focus are aligned
to enhancing research and learning experience, providing enabling
technology infrastructure, managing information strategically, and
expanding service delivery.

As a result of an increased focus on
both the University strategic goals and a service oriented approach to
solution delivery, this role has been created. Reporting to the
Director, ICT Academic Services, you will be responsible for the
development and provision of eResearch services at the University of
Sydney.

This is an exciting role that
engages broadly with key internal relationships with ICT; Library; and
the DVC Research portfolio who jointly provide services to researchers
and faculties. You will also have the opportunity to build key external
relationships with peers in other universities and with government bodies and vendors,
and eResearch organisations (including ANDS, RDSI, NECTAR and
Intersect). As such, you will be customer focused and a confident
communicator who can liaise with a diverse group of people, as well as
influence and negotiate with those around you.

As an innovative technologist and a
strong leader, you will closely interact with the academic community and
IT managers, and manage, develop, and motivate IT while providing
quality advice to the Director, ICT Academic Services.
You will also be responsible for the productivity and development of
the team. With continuous improvement top of mind together with
adherence to the University’s strategic directions, you will ensure a
successful ICT solutions life cycle and help us present eResearch as an
integrated capability of ICT and the University.

To qualify, you will have:

sound understanding of IT development and service delivery involving large scale systems

research experience, particularly eResearch

extensive experience and comprehensive understanding of the higher education sector

appreciation of the role of technology in delivering solutions and services

excellent and persuasive communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively with non-ICT personnel

capacity to gain the confidence and support of the University community including senior management, academic and general staff

experience in staff supervision and development.

Do not miss out on this opportunity
to develop your career in a complex and challenging IT environment. As
an employer the University offers good work-life balance and many
outstanding employment benefits.

Remuneration package:
a competitive remuneration package is available (consisting of a base
salary, leave loading and up to 17% employer’s contribution to
superannuation).

All applications must be submitted via the University of Sydney careers website. Full position description can be downloaded from the link below.General enquiries from agencies will not be accepted and initial enquiries about the role can be directed to Fabrice Noël on (02) 8627 1218 or fabrice.noel-E0wInbZyfUpWG/WdbR7gnQ@public.gmane.org

CFP: IR Journal special issue on Search Intents and Diversification

############################################################
First Call for Papers:
Information Retrieval ( http://springer.com/10791 )
Special Issue on Search Intents and Diversification
Submissions due: Apr 2, 2012
Final accept/reject decisions: July 31, 2012
############################################################
MOTIVATION AND BACKGROUND
Information retrieval users have diverse search needs, and the
level of detail given in the user's search query can differ
widely depending on how clear the underlying information need
itself is, the user's search environment (e.g. input device),
and how difficult it is for the user to express the need in the
form of a query. For these reasons, many queries are ambiguous
and/or underspecified.
In light of this, research in accommodating different search
intents has received a lot of attention lately. For example,
major conferences like SIGIR, WWW and WSDM have begun to see
papers on search result diversification, which aims to capture
different user needs within one entry-point search result page.
This problem was discussed intensively at the ECIR 2011 Diversity
in Document Retrieval Workshop, and a follow-up workshop will
take place at WSDM 2012. Also, starting at TREC 2009,
the TREC Web and Blog tracks have measured the diversity of
participating systems in retrieving web pages and blog posts,
respectively. Moreover, the recent INTENT task at NTCIR-9
tackles not only search result diversification but also the
task of mining intents given a query.
As the third round of the TREC web diversity track and the first
round of the NTCIR INTENT task conclude toward the end of 2011,
we believe that the timing is right for a special issue on
search intents and diversification to be published in 2012, in
order to highlight the advances and clarify the future goals in
this area. We welcome relevant submissions from these evaluation
venues as well as from outside.
SCOPE
We encourage submissions that are related to one or more
of the following themes:
- Intent and diversity related tasks at TREC, NTCIR and other
IR evaluation venues
- Interpreting and mining search intents
- Handling navigational and informational search intents
- Handling ambiguity and multiple facets in queries
- Handling novelty/redundancy and diversity
- Building intent and diversity related test collections
- Diversification in non-traditional IR tasks,
e.g. aggregated search, exploratory search and session IR
- Interfaces for presenting diversified search results
- Evaluation methods for intent and diversity
IMPORTANT DATES
Apr 02, 2012 Submissions due
May 21, 2012 First-round reviews sent to authors
Jun 18, 2012 Revised manuscripts due
Jul 31, 2012 Final decisions sent to authors
SUBMISSIONS
Detailed instructions will be announced later this year.
Manuscripts must adhere to the format guidelines shown in the
"Instructions for Authors" page available from
http://springer.com/10791 .
GUEST EDITORS
Tetsuya Sakai tesakai at microsoft.com
Noriko Kando kando at nii.ac.jp
Craig Macdonald craig.macdonald at glasgow.ac.uk
Ian Soboroff ian.soboroff at nist.gov
Please contact the guest editors if you have any questions.
PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
Rakesh Agrawal, Microsoft Research
Javed Aslam, Northeastern University
Ben Carterette, University of Delaware
Olivier Chapelle, Yahoo! Labs
Charlie Clarke, University of Waterloo
Evangelos Kanoulas, University of Sheffield
Mounia Lalmas, Yahoo!
Hang Li, Microsoft
Iadh Ounis, University of Glasgow
Filip Radlinksi, Microsoft
Davood Rafiei, University of Alberta
Stephen Robertson, Microsoft
Ian Ruthven, University of Strathclyde
Rodrygo Santos, University of Glasgow
Jun Wang, University College London
William Webber, University of Melbourne
Emine Yilmaz, Microsoft,
ChengXiang Zhai, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Min Zhang, Tsinghua University
The University of Glasgow, charity number SC004401

CIKM 2011 Reminder - Regular Registration Ends Soon

Call for Participation
CIKM 2011 - 20th ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management
24-28 October 2011 ­ Glasgow, Scotland
http://www.cikm2011.org** Regular (online) registration ends 30th September **http://www.cikm2011.org/registration
The CIKM conference series brings together leading researchers and
developers from the database, information retrieval, and knowledge
management communities to identify research challenges facing the
development of knowledge and information systems, and to shape future
research directions through the publication of high quality, applied and
theoretical research findings.
CIKM 2011 offers an exciting research programme which includes:
* Keynote presentations from David Karger, MIT, Maurizio Lenzerini,
Università di Roma La Sapienza, and Justin Zobel, University of Melbourne
(http://www.cikm2011.org/keynotes)
* 410 full, short and poster papers describing the latest research in
information retrieval, knowledge management and database research
(http://www.cikm2011.org/schedule)
* A dedicated Industry Event featuring presentations from John Giannandrea,
Google, Jeff Hammerbacher, Cloudera, Khalid Al-Kofahi, Thomson Reuters and
Stephen Robertson, Microsoft Research
(http://www.cikm2011.org/industryevent)
* 14 workshops on cutting-edge topics (http://www.cikm2011.org/workshops)
* 10 tutorials from leading researchers (http://www.cikm2011.org/tutorials)
* Demonstration sessions offering to opportunity to interact with prototype
research systems (http://www.cikm2011.org/demos)
* Panel on Collaborative and Social Search
CIKM 2011 will take place in Glasgow, Scotland. Glasgow is Scotland's
largest city and one of the most visited cities in Europe. A cosmopolitan
metropolis, Glasgow is a culturally rich, vibrant night time city with a
long history at the forefront of socio-economic and political change in
Scotland and the UK, offering everything one would expect from a great
British city but with a Scottish flare.
Registration includes admission to main conference sessions, electronic
proceedings, lunches and coffee breaks, civic reception hosted by Glasgow
City Council and conference Banquet at Glasgow¹s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and
Museum.
The conference will be held in the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Our accommodation
booking system (http://www.cikm2011.org/accomm) offers special rates at this
hotel and others in the local area.
CIKM 2011 is sponsored by: ACM SIGIR, ACM SIGWEB, EMC2, Google, SAP,
Microsoft, Yahoo! Labs, Yandex, CrossRef, Cambridge University Press, IBM
Research, Ebay, and Springer and organised by:
Iadh Ounis, University of Glasgow, and Ian Ruthven, University of
Strathclyde (General Chairs)
Bettina Berendt, K.U. Leuven, Wenfei Fan, University of Edinburgh, and Arjen
de Vries, CWI (Program chairs)
Craig Macdonald, University of Glasgow (Workshops Chair)
Jon Ritchie (Local arrangements Chair)
Gianni Amati, FUB (Posters Chair)
Daniel Tunkelang, LinkedIn, and Tony Russell-Rose, Endeca (Industry Event
Chairs)
Jaap Kamps, University of Amsterdam, and Fabrizio Silvestri, ISTI-CNR
(Tutorial Chairs)
Omar Alonso, Microsoft (Demos Chair)
Jeremy Pickens, Catalyst Repository Systems, (Panel Chair)
Don Metzler, University of Southern California (Publicity Chair)
You can email CIKM2011 on questions{at}cikm2011.org, or tweet us at
<at> CIKM2011
We hope to welcome you to CIKM 2011 in Glasgow!

CFP: Video Browser Showdown at MMM 2012

============================================================================
CALL FOR PAPERS
**Video Browser Showdown**http://mmm2012.org/vbshowdown/
January 6, 2012, Klagenfurt University, Klagenfurt, Austria.
============================================================================
The Video Browser Showdown (held as a separate session of MMM 2012) is a live
video browsing competition where international researchers, working in the field
of interactive video search, evaluate and demonstrate the efficiency of their
tools in presence of the audience. The aim of the Video Browser Showdown is to
evaluate video browsing tools for their efficiency at "Known Item Search"(KIS) tasks
with a well-defined data set in direct comparison with other tools. For each
KIS task the searchers need to interactively find a short video clip
in a one-hour video file within a specific time limit.
The Video Browser Showdown will be a moderated "special demo session" of MMM 2012,
where 24 KIS tasks (2◊12) need to be solved. For each task the moderator presents
the target clip on a shared screen that is visible to all participants.
The participants use their own equipment to perform an interactive search in the
specified video file (taken from a common data set). The performance of participating
tools will be evaluated in terms of successful answers and average search time.
The decision for the best-performing tool is based on two runs:
- expert run: the participants (developers of the tools) themselves act as searchers
- novice run: volunteers from the audience act as searchers (after a short training phase)
The overall best-performing tool will be awarded with the "Best Video Browser" certificate.
No Metadata:
============
The videos to be used for the Video Browser Showdown will be provided without any metadata.
However, participants are allowed to perform any content analysis that supports interactive
browsing in the video (e.g., through novel content visualization, content clustering, or
advanced seeker-bars etc.). The search process must be interactive, i.e., no text-queries are allowed.
Participation:
==============
Anyone who has a video browsing tool that allows to interactively browse, explore, or navigate
in a single video file (search shouldnít be based on automatic queries) may participate.
Examples of tools of interest are: a video shot browser(e.g., temporal-based or concept-based),
a video player with extended navigation/interaction means, a video content exploration tool,
or tools using advanced visualizations for improved navigation/interaction("video surrogates") etc.
Also tools developed for interactive video search on mobile devices are of interest.
Submission:
===========
To apply for participation please submit a scientific paper (2-3 pages in Springer LNCS format)
to one of the organizers via email until October 7, 2011. The submission should include a detailed
description of the interaction with the video browsing tool and how it supports interactive search in
video.
Submissions will be peer-reviewed to ensure maximum quality. Accepted submissions will be published
in the conference proceedings of MMM 2012.
Important dates:
================
October 7, 2011 paper submission (2-3 pages, Springer LNCS)
October 12, 2011 notification of acceptance
October 19, 2011 camera-ready versions due
January 6, 2012 competition at MMM 2012
Organizers:
===========
Klaus Schoeffmann, Klagenfurt University, Austria, ks@...
Werner Bailer, JOANNEUM RESEARCH, Austria, werner.bailer@...
Cees Snoek, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, cgmsnoek@...
More information:
=================
http://mmm2012.org/vbshowdown/

*******************************************************************
PaIR 2011
Call for Participation
4th International Workshop on Patent Information Retrieval (PaIR'11)
CIKM 2011, Glasgow UK, October 24th
Workshop website: http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/pair2011/
Registration website: http://www.cikm2011.org/registration
(regular registration deadline: September 30th, 2011)
*******************************************************************
------------------------------
ACCEPTED PAPERS:
* Debasis Ganguly, Johannes Leveling and Gareth Jones. United we fall, Divided we stand: A study of Query
Segmentation and PRF for Patent Prior Art Search
* Manisha Verma and Vasudeva Varma. Patent search using IPC Class vectors
* Allan Hanbury, Naeem Bhatti, Mihai Lupu and Roland Mörzinger. Patent Image Retrieval: a Survey
* Walid Magdy and Gareth Jones. A Study on Query Expansion Methods for Patent Retrieval
* Mihai Lupu. The Status of Retrieval Evaluation in the Patent Domain
* Hidetsugu Nanba, Saori Mayumi and Toshiyuki Takezawa. Automatic Construction of a Bilingual Thesaurus
using Citation Analysis
INVITED SPEAKERS:
1. Jane List, Lighthouse IP Group - "Patent Information Retrieval in Practice: Industry Use Cases"
2. Stephen Adams, Magister Ltd. - "A Practitioner’s View on PaIR"
------------------------------
WORKSHOP OBJECTIVE
The objective of the workshop (and of the PaIR workshop series since 2008 in general) is to provide a forum
for Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management scientists as well as Patent Retrieval experts from
industry to study the next generation of patent search tools.
We encourage IP professionals to present their special information needs and IR&KM researchers to
present relevant technical ideas, for example for high recall search in prior art searching.
We will also promote exchange of ideas on measuring the progress of system performance for retrieval tasks
in the intellectual property domain.
------------------------------
PROPOSED PROGRAMME
The workshop will begin with two invited speakers, at least one of which will be from the industry. Then,
accepted papers will be invited to do short presentations. Discussions will take place in the second part
of the workshop around posters of the accepted papers. The workshop will end with a separation into
working groups, based on the discussions which have taken place during the morning and early afternoon.
Potential workgroup discussion topics are:
• Industry – Academia: collaboration or competition?
• Patentese : experiences and ideas on understanding and processing it
• Image recognition for patents
• Data annotation, text mining and their use for a more semantic patent retrieval
------------------------------
ORGANIZERS
Mihai Lupu, Information Retrieval Facility, Vienna
Andreas Rauber, Vienna University of Technology
Allan Hanbury, Vienna University of Technology
PaIR 2011 is partially supported through the MUMIA Cost Action IC1002, funded under the EU RTD Framework Programme
-------------------------------
CONTACT
Mihai Lupu
m.lupu@...

Tutorial Programme at Search Solutions 2011

SEARCH SOLUTIONS 2011: Tutorial Programme
Tuesday 15th November, Covent Garden, London
New for 2011, Search Solutions now includes a Tutorial Programme to offer
conference attendees and local participants a stimulating and informative
selection of practical training courses reflecting current topics and
state-of-the-art methods in search and information retrieval.
These tutorials will be presented by subject matter experts and will
reflect the high academic and professional standards of the Search Solutions
conference series.
PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME
09:00-12:30 Information Retrieval & Data Analytics, (Dr. Jun Wang, UCL)
This tutorial is aimed at providing an up-to-date introduction of information
retrieval and data analytics (data mining) techniques. It is about how to
automatically find relevant information from large-scale data collections
and subsequently extract meaningful patterns out of it. While the basic
concepts and statistical methods of information retrieval and data mining
are covered, the course is primarily focused on practical algorithms of
textual document indexing, relevance ranking, web usage mining, text analytics,
as well as their performance evaluations. Practical retrieval and data mining
applications including web search engines, personalisation and recommender
systems, the mining of frequent patterns, associations and correlations, and
anomaly detection will also be covered.
Further details: http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/jun.wang/blog/2011/09/23/bcs-tutorial-irda2011/
13:30-17:00 Designing the Search Experience, (Dr. Tony Russell-Rose, UXLabs and City University London)
This tutorial explores the fundamental concepts and principles of User-Centred
Design for information search and discovery and demonstrates how to apply them
in a range of practical contexts. Participants will learn how to differentiate
between various types of search behaviour, develop an understanding of the key
dimensions within the search user experience, and discover how to apply UI
design patterns to commercial search applications. The session concludes with
a group exercise applying these skills to a range of practical design challenges.
Further details: http://isquared.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/designing-the-search-experience-tutorial-at-search-solutions-2011/
LOCATION
Search Solutions is organised by the Information Retrieval Specialist Group of
the BCS (The Chartered Institute for IT), and is held at the BCS Central London Office:
BCS, 1st Floor
The Davidson Building
5 Southampton Street
London, WC2E 7HA
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.8404
REGISTRATION
Registration fees (including VAT at 20%) are as follows:
* Normal Rate: £90 per tutorial
* If booked together with Search Solutions 2011: £70 per tutorial.
For further details and to register see: http://irsg.bcs.org/SearchSolutions/2011/ss2011tutorials.php